SFIAF 2011: KURTISS HARE PREVIEWS THE "TOP DRAWERS" PROGRAM

Allow me to preview a shorts program playing at the upcoming San Francisco International Animation Festival (SFIAF). "Top Drawers" is a selection of brief forays into fantastic universes where gravity has been obliterated, colors resonate like a crystal chime, and harmony is a carefully sculpted ball of clay. You can enjoy these sensational experiences yourself at New People Cinema on Friday, November 11th at 5:00PM and again on Sunday, November 13th at 4:00PM.

Hinterland (Jakob Weyde & Jost Althoff, 2010)—The war drums sound, and you're off—rampaging through the night forest, weaving in and out of pitch black pines, the limestone crackling beneath the momentary weight of your paws. The world around you, compressed into a two-toned blur of frenetic bygones. What's come out in you is a wildness, a slobbering savagery.

White No White / Weiss Kein Weiss (Anna Bergmann, 2010)—You hop along joyfully, frolicking and forging ahead in your iodine dream, but before you is a wall that will go unnoticed until you smash up against it. There is a melancholy at the fore and, indeed, the aft. Is it simple curiosity that compels you beyond that wall, or something more? One thing is for certain, you will become something larger.

Romance / Romanze (Georges Schwizgebel, 2011)—A sweet reverie guides the reel over the cerebral lamp. You imagine the places you will be, the hands you will touch, and the dangers you will face. Quickly, then slowly, you approximate a sphericity of being. Every blue is deep and every red is warm. When at last you awake, those wavelengths seem to reach your eyes out of phase.

Muybridge's Strings / Maiburijji no ito (Kōji Yamamura, 2011)—Up from the sea comes Time Herself and her daughter. A mother, so in love. You're struck that beauty is not eternal. But you are man, the toolmaker—ingenious to a fault. Encountering a musical stave that bears a set of lines and a cluster of feelings that will arpeggiate and repeat for many ages, you taste obsession. Infinity is alive in the moment, and she will be reinvented frame by frame.

Flux (Candaş Şişman, 2011)—Intermittent signals emerge; we've made contact. They appear to you as the sounds of a mechancial interaction, but that discounts the life force that is everywhere here apparent. You stand amazed at the cave paintings of some far advanced civilization.



Metachaos (Alessandro Bavari, 2011)—You float along a digital factory floor, spinning in perpetual elegance. There it is, a neuronal invasion, an antimatter meets matter moment. Industrial fluids are magnetically activated. Freefall is the constant, even while gravity has lost her hold. A quivering panic, you envision. Blankets of pernicious debris rain down on the hopelessly tortured, and the unaffected ones, they act out a self-imposed regimen of frozenness. This is death's thumping libido.

METACHAOS from Alessandro Bavari on Vimeo.

Strata #3 (Quayola, 2009)—You recall that the universe is a projection, and that all information from the very beginning sits on the surface. Every sculpture, every painting, every man, then, is a pixel on a plane of infinitesimal precision and galactic breadth. Should that projection ever break down, should her scan lines skip a frame, should her colors ever distort, what wires would you behold? What are her Sistine underpinnings?



I Know You (Krebitz, 2010)—In fits and starts, our internal rhythms are haunted by the scribbles of our own invention. You know your own story, your own secret places. You have an Achilles' soul and an abiding terror.

August Song (Jodie Mack, 2011)—Lushness and dehydration coexist in the haze of your hookah smoke. Unpredictable progressions of familiar patterns. Textures of home envelop your carefree childhood dance. A serene psychedelia, a roundness of sound buzz about your head. Fireworks reflected in a cardboard sea. You stutter-step through layers of stilted movement, until your thoughts become fluid and polyphonic again.



Cross-published at Cinefrisco.

OIAF: SMALL DESTRUCTIONS—Adam Hartzell's Evening Class Interview With Lark Pien

Lark Pien is an award-winning cartoonist and illustrator. And she is also my friend. She is my sole connection to the world of comics, graphic novels, and animation. (I did have a comic book phase my first year of high school, but I noticed I wasn't hanging out with my friends nearly as much so I packed up the Power Packs, canceled my Alpha Flights and ceased the Secret Wars in favor of external rather than internal conversations.) Whenever Lark and I meet up, our conversations are rapid and breathless, having so many epiphanies and thoughts to catch up on. I have learned a great deal from Lark and she always fuels me to further explore my own ideas and interests.

Our meet-ups have become fewer because Lark's cartoonist career has been booming lately. She received the Harvey award for her coloring work on Gene Luen Yang's Printz winner American Born Chinese (the first graphic novel ever nominated for a National Book Award). And last year saw the release of her first book Long Tail Kitty (Blue Apple Books, 2009) and last weekend of her second book Mr. Elephanter (Candlewick Press, 2010). Both are characters she's been developing for years and—although classified as children's books—many an adult will find much to appreciate in Lark's quirky sense of humor and wonder along with the playful joy of her illustration style. And don't just take my word for it. Kirkus Review has this to say about Mr. Elephanter: "There isn't a page here that doesn't melt with charm." And Publisher's Weekly is sure readers will be converts begging for more after getting to the 70 frames of imaginative (and hilarious) games in Long Tail Kitty.

Along with this, Lark has found herself included in this year's Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF) as part of a series entitled "Californimation" on October 22, 2010 at 5:00PM at the Arts Court at Club SAW. Lark is on the docket with her video project Small Destructions which was a piece commissioned by San Francisco's Cartoon Art Museum (CAM) where Lark came into the museum and painted a daily frame on four large canvases, video-taping the entire process. This video was then sped-up in time-lapse fashion and synced-up with the music of Cherryweed with lyrics by Stian.

My thanks to Lark for taking a break from her busy schedule to indulge a brief email interview in hopes that the lucky folks attending OIAF might gain a broader context of her talented work.

* * *

Adam Hartzell: Can you tell us how the Small Destructions video project came to be?

Lark Pien: In 2007, the CAM in San Francisco received funding [from the Feishacker Foundation and the Zellerbach Foundation] to house a new series in their facility—the Bay Area Spotlight. It took up an entire wing (a large room), and cycled biannually, featuring a comprehensive body of work from a local cartoonist.

I was invited to be the first in this series, and so I met with the curator to discuss details of the show. He expressed interest in having me paint a mural, and this idea grew and evolved into an installation piece for the museum, the Small Destructions installation.

I came in after hours and painted in 1.5 hour increments (employees were not getting paid to stay later, and I did not want to put them out). I am usually a very fastidious painter, but to set up shop, get the camera positioned and rolling, paint and then clean up all in an hour and a half was no easy task. The painting/filming portion of the project took one month. The film editing (which I am obviously novice to) and music coordination took another few weeks.

Hartzell: I assume the story you ended up painting was created for the commission (correct me if I'm wrong). Do you have a name for the characters and how long have you been developing these particular characters utilized in the story you paint in Small Destructions?

Pien: The Small Destructions story is a stand alone mini-comic, and was originally part of a limited edition handmade two-comic box set—pfew! that's a mouthful!—that my husband [fellow cartoonist Thien Pham] and I made in 2004. Each of us wrote our own comic stories, then combined them together in this Monster Box set. The only rule was that the stories had to have monsters.

When deciding on a subject for the installation, the first Monster Box story came to mind. I hadn't played with it for awhile, but it was a good length, fairly straight forward in concept, and had a lot of visual texture. The monsters, like many of my characters, do not have names; but you get the idea that they're neighbors or friends and that they share readily.

Hartzell: What I've always loved about your work is the playfulness with just the right subtext of wickedness and Small Destructions conveys that perfectly. However, what themes do you see emerging in your work? I see a consistent theme, but is that intentional? Is it laid out in a detailed way or is it something you more so let emerge as you go about creating?

Pien: One thing that I have been told repeatedly about my work is that my stories are lyrical but do not have a lot of plot. Some people find the lack of plot dissatisfying, but I think these kinds of stories are fine to tell. I don't think I'm telling a story to make a point but to illustrate a kind of "way"; is that Taoist? Ha! I'm interested in illustrating the unpredictability of the world we live in. I think our reactions to chance, to luck, and to fate are often painful and funny.

The realization that my work is thematic is a recent one. In my twenties I never focused on a project longer than when I was making it. Once a painting or comic was sold/adopted and in someone else's home, I'd carry on to my next adventure. But I'm nearing my forties now, and I've been thinking a lot about doing some projects that will take a long time to do; so stepping back and thinking about themes has become relevant.

Hartzell: How did this video project end up being included in OIAF and are you familiar with the work of the other folks who will be featured in the "Californimation" series?

Pien: The OIAF contacted curator Andrew Farago at the CAM and invited him to the festival. Mr. Farago was asked to assemble a group of animation pieces for the "Californimation" segment, and the OIAF asked specifically for my little film to be included, what luck!

I have met Dalton Grant on several occasions, but have not seen his animation pieces. I've seen a little of Nina Paley's work and love her designs for Sita Sings the Blues. I don't know how my rudimentary project will fit with the refined collection of their professional work, but I really appreciate the film being a part of OIAF this year. The festival will make for an incredible week.

Hartzell: I know you just released your second book Mr. Elephanter this weekend and Long Tail Kitty last year, could you tell us a little about those characters (and if the books will be available in Canada) and if there has been any discussion about taking those into an animated form?

Pien: Yes, the books are available in Canada. My comic audience consists of mostly adults, but now the stories are in children's book formats as well. Obviously, I'm happy to have both. Long Tail Kitty emerged in the early 2000's, and was featured in a story for my pet rabbit, who died while I was traveling. It was a sad story and made some people cry. Over the years I've written ten or so Long Tail Kitty stories, but they are all pretty happy.

Brave Mr. Elephanter (the comic) was written for my brother, who loved all kinds of pachyderms when we were growing up. He has been considering adoption, so I decided to write a story about that. The adoption theme is much more prominent in the comic than it is in the children's book.

Mr. Elephanter and Long Tail Kitty are some of my kinder characters. They live in worlds where there is a strong sense of well-being. If there is ever any drama, it usually doesn't get any crazier than fighting with a friend, or accidentally getting roped into a babysitting session. I've been asked to option Long Tail Kitty for cartoons, but I think companies are asking for the character and not the stories. I'm interested in Long Tail Kitty's world and his stories, and less interested in branding his character.

I like interactive formats (games, choose-your-own-adventure type stories), so if it was an interactive animation project or video game, I'd be interested in looking into it. Recently someone showed me how to do some rudimentary animation using Photoshop. That was neat. And I have a brand new Final Cut application that I'd like to install and learn, so I think some in-house cartoons may be in my future.

* * *

Lark Pien's full bio can be found on her website and further samplings of her art are galleried here. All images copyright of the artist.

Cross-published on Twitch.

TIM BURTON'S ALICE IN WONDERLAND

"Art isn't easy / every minor detail is a major decision / have to keep things in scale / have to hold to your vision."—Stephen Sondheim

"Vision" is one of those double-edged properties—much like a looking glass—that, at first, promises pleasure for reflecting back something new to the spectator, but which—as is often the case in our fickle and vain consumerist society—eventually offers reflections all too familiar and, thus, undesirable and (dare I say?) unattractive. It's way too easy to demand that Vincent Van Gogh paint us another "Starry Night" rather than face the reflection of our unbridled consumerist desire. In other words, it's far too easy to blame an artist for our dissatisfied appetites. And when it comes to cogent criticism, the effort required to distinguish one from the other is a plummet down the rabbit hole indeed.

Ironically enough, criticism based on consumerist dissatisfaction is just this side of criticism based on a nostalgic adherence to source materials—in this case Lewis Carroll's beloved Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Alice's Adventures Through the Looking Glass—and one might even consider these two poles of criticism to bear the polarized countenance of Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum. So far, what I'm hearing in response to Tim Burton's inflection of the Alice story is the sibling tussle between those two perspectives; elbows to the ribs and all. Perhaps much of this tussle could have been avoided had Burton elected to entitle his project Alice in Underland?—which, as far as I'm concerned, would have worked much better, been more exact, and dissolved many an expectation, evening the playing field.

While Twitch teammate Jim Tudor acknowledges that Tim Burton is "one of the pre-eminent visual stylists in the world of filmmaking", he's quick to side with commercial interests to complain that Burton "has generally had nothing new to say since his earliest, most triumphant works" and that Burton's Alice is a "shockingly conventional tale—a Campbellian hero's journey." As a student of Joseph Campbell's who has watched his influence ebb and flow over the decades, it no longer surprises me when the monomyth is reduced to the "conventional" instead of being recognized appropriately as the source font of cultural inflection for millennia. Such unbridled ennui suffered by so many young critics—wanting something perpetually new from our beleaguered visionaries—seems to forget what Alice learned in Wonderland: "The hurrier I go, the behinder I get." That's a sage warning. In the race for new style, new product, new vision, do we forget to encourage the few visionaries we have? Mileage varies, of course, even when moving way too fast. And hip dismissal such as College Humor's caricature of "Tim Burton's Secret Formula" (via our friends at /Film)—undeniably truthful as far as the truth of caricature warrants and eliciting the expected guffaw—does little in my estimation other than to momentarily supplant genuine vision with kneejerk insight. Granted, kneejerk insight satisfies low attention spans than—here's the word again—deep reflection requires.

As a good friend once told me, "The silent mirror forfeits" and, therefore, in any narrative involving a looking glass, one hopes that the mirror will speak back and that self-reflection will engage how one imagines their identity and how they keep that imagined identity in scale. For me this has long been the presiding lesson of the Lewis Carroll stories: imagination and scale. And—contrary to all the complaints that Burton has drifted too far from the original material—I find he has in fact reinvigorated Carroll's most salient themes, especially through his visual design.

Keeping an imagined identity in scale is the selfsame challenge that presents itself when such beloved literary works as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are adapted—i.e., imagined—for the big screen. It is, afterall, a difficult transition from a little book to a big screen. Industrial compromise requires nibbling first on this and sipping next on that to even make it through the door. In my humble opinion, Tim Burton has imagined a wondrous world playful with scale and expressed it in such a way that it applies to the awkward process by which a young person discovers a confidence that fits (give and take some shrinkage) for them. His Alice in Wonderland is as much a "just-so" story as it is one about "muchness." For those who criticize that he has lost his touch, for crying out loud, go find another visionary and enjoy them for one or two films before your critical ennui sets in and—while you're at it—why not question why your ennui keeps rearing its weary head? For all his obvious failings of repetition (one could also see them as creative reiterations), Burton's works of art remain some of my most anticipated, and the Hollywood landscape would be rendered far more anemic should he be discouraged from expressing his vision because fans want him to make another Nightmare Before Christmas.

Since the silent 1903 filmic adaptation of Alice in Wonderland—currently available for viewing courtesy of BFI—adherence to John Tenniel's illustrations has been a near given and the rule by which adaptations have been evaluated. The popular imaginary has a dear affection for these visualizations, which—again—concern scale, not the least being physical growth. Should Alice be a little blonde-haired girl in a blue dress or can she be—as Burton sees her—a young woman in a blue dress? Reams have been written—and it is widely well-known—that Alice Liddell, Carroll's inspiration, actually had dark hair and a short fringe so from the get-go there has been a wrestling within the popular imaginary of not only how this girl should look like but who she really is. That, after all, is the informing question posed by our hookah-smoking caterpillar. And in Burton's version, the Dormouse's doubt darkens Alice's presence in Underland.

So setting aside all we want from Tim Burton, I'd like to take a look at what he's given us. Tim Burton's achievement in his vision of Alice in Wonderland is to situate self-inquiry against social expectation. His is one of those important tales that warn against the false marriage and that promise a young woman that she can become herself all on her own and without the hindrance of the male. Jim Tudor is quick to reduce this to "a typically anachronistic female movie heroine", which begs a gendered argument against all those typically anachronistic male movie heroes that fanboys never seem to question. I concur more with guest Twitch contributor Mike Sizemore's quite fair observation: "It's also refreshing to see a female lead have so much fun in an adventure while reminding Alice's target audience that doing six impossible things before breakfast is something to be held onto no matter how old you are."

More pertinently, I would argue that like most fairy tales, the Carroll books are not really children's literature and have always been darkly psychological books intended for adults and—as psychology is, in my estimation, organic and evolutionary, anchored in the body—it only stands to follow that the psychological strength of a story will adapt to the zeitgeist of the time. Now some people don't like this. They prefer that a story stay anchored in a certain time and will, let's say, complain that Burton has sexualized a children's story—and that's all very fine and good for unapologetic nostalgists—but, it doesn't strike me that this is what Burton wanted when he re-imagined the story of Alice and—true to his own vision—he has retold the story for our time, for better or worse (and, in this case, admittedly both). The fact that there is an ongoing adjustment throughout the film—a constant struggle to find the right size—speaks I think to the indeterminacy and insecurity of any given time, especially our own.

There are dangers of conflation in the script; but, these dangers have been around since the story first began to be imagined. Some of those conflations have inspired irritation for generations—most notably, the conflation of the Queen of Hearts with the Red Queen—but, such conflations become scriptural strategies that deal not only with the compression of narrative time but narrative image. Conflation and compression, incidentally, are merely different ways of being different sizes. If there is any conflation I object to in Burton's reconfiguration of the Alice tale, it's the worrisome blend of Alice with an armored Joan of Arc. I somewhat understand why Burton stretched this battle for independence towards an image of chivalric militancy against a dragon, even as I concur with Roger Ebert that audiences today require filmmakers to end otherwise involving narratives with "routine and boring action." Ebert asks: "Why does Alice in Wonderland have to end with an action sequence? Characters not rich enough? Story run out? Little minds, jazzed by sugar from the candy counter, might get too worked up without it? Or is it that executives, not trusting their artists and timid in the face of real stories, demand an action climax as insurance? Insurance of what? That the story will have a beginning and a middle but nothing so tedious as an ending?" In my estimation, that's cogent criticism. Fanboys, question your appetite for action and how it hinders vision.

For all these grumpy critics who don't like what Tim Burton has imagined with this story, perhaps they need to nibble on—or sip from—something that will shrink their large heads to a proper scale of imagination? Failures of imagination have more to do with being unable or unwilling to suspend disbelief: the most time-honored of spectatorial requirements. Merely buying a ticket doesn't do it. It isn't that a director is responsible for making a spectator suspend disbelief; that has to be allowed from the spectator himself. And if you're going to be hugging a book too hard or holding on to a desired visualization too intensely, you might not see the mordant and hallucinatory wonder laid out before you, which deserves due respect.

Finally, in terms of characterizations, Mia Wasikowska bears the pale countenance of a young girl turning into a young woman, perhaps forced to by the social demands being placed on her. Her paleness becomes a visual accent to the disturbed colors of Underland. Along with his concern that Alice desperately needs a Wonderland nap, Jim Tudor writes intriguingly about his concern that such pallor merely guises Burton's penchant for cinematic alter-egos. However, truth is, this is a visual element present since Tenniel's illustrations, which even Ebert admits were alarming. "Why," he wondered as a young boy, "did Alice have such deep, dark eye sockets?" Shall we levy a complaint against Lewis Carrol for writing such obvious pallid alter-egos as well? Or is it time to wonder what Alice's exhausted countenance suggests?

Johnny Depp—with customary flair—has become the Mad Hatter and invested a tone of self-doubt that complicates his portrayal with the anguish of someone who is aware of—but has no control over—encroaching madness. Once again I concur with Mike Sizemore: "Traumatized and suffering from split personalities, it's a nice touch that in his few coherent moments he seems aware that he's gone insane allowing Depp to briefly add a little humanity to the character." Contrary to Twitch teammate James Marsh's harsh assessment, this is the first time I've ever felt anything for the character of the Mad Hatter other than bemusement and that's totally due to Depp's pitch-perfect performance. Further, I like that Depp is not immediately recognizable under his costuming and makeup effects. He looks more like Elijah Wood than himself. I will concede, however, that the dance is silly and distracting, but then so is our zeitgeist.

Helena Bonham Carter's grotesque Red Queen hazards a one-note performance; but, then, this suits the character's megalomania. I didn't expect much range from such a petty tyrant. As Knave, Crispin Glover comes across cruel and irreal. The weakest performance, by far—and here I wholeheartedly disagree with James Marsh—was Anne Hathaway as the White Queen. Glenda, she ain't, though she flits around like she's supposed to be. Wrong story, Anne! The other actors, who are primarily voice actors—Alan Rickman, Stephen Fry, Michael Sheen, Timothy Spall and Christopher Lee—all do admirable jobs disguising their British celebrities in enlivened portrayals.

I do hold valid Jim Tudor's complaint regarding the eleventh hour shift to 3D; but, again, see this as a consequence of consumer appetites. Studios are struggling to keep moviegoers coming to the theaters and 3D remains an effective lure. I actually intend—in sheer deference to Kurt Halfyard—to watch Alice in Wonderland again, in 2D, more because I find that 3D glasses mute color and I want to see Burton's palette in full array.

In conclusion, I would say, "Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!" In other words, beware critics, and see the film for yourself. It may not be your cup of tea, but at least you can say a chair was found for you at the tea party.

Cross-published on Twitch.

FANTASTIC MR. FOX—Peter Galvin's Review

How strange it must have been to be tasked with adapting Wes Anderson's eccentric and idiosyncratic live-action style to the animation required for Fantastic Mr. Fox. Mark Gustafson was the brave soul who took on that task when Henry Selick left the project to animate Coraline. During a Q&A session following the San Francisco International Animation Festival screening of Fantastic Mr. Fox, Animation Director Gustafson recalled how Anderson's unyielding dedication to his vision for the film made him very uncomfortable as a professional animator. Though out of his element, Anderson never allowed the once-accepted boundaries of stop-motion animation to compromise his vision. It's a good thing too, as it's Anderson's background in live-action film that most likely makes Fantastic Mr. Fox feel so different from other popular animated fare.

Based on the beloved book by Roald Dahl, Fox is the story of the titular Mr. Fox, a retired chicken thief who risks his happy home life for one last hit on the three meanest farmers in town: Boggis, Bunce and Bean. Spying on their farms from his tree-home, Fox concocts a secret scheme to help himself to their supply of chickens, ducks and cider. It's a breezy set-up and it initially feels like the story might have painted itself into a corner, but it's soon clear that Mr. Fox is less concerned with retaining a tight plot than with creating a rapid sense of forward progression. I'm unfamiliar with the source material, and the slapdash story might have been unavoidable, but it's a negligible concern when the editing and dialogue are as tight as they are in this film.

As a game of one-upmanship begins between Fox and the farmers, we start to see evidence of Anderson's non-traditional approach to animation. Characters often are jarringly replaced with different models—though recognizable, their sizes and shapes look noticeably different—and little imperfections in backgrounds and character design are perceptible throughout. Everything is very DIY and it's clear the filmmakers have chosen to focus on creating a sense of wonder and whimsy over polish and predictability. Instead of pulling the viewer out of the film, the concept of enhancing the gaudiness on screen only adds to its playfulness.

The voice-actors all are obviously in their element working with Anderson; many culled from previous films the director has made. George Clooney, Meryl Streep and Jason Schwartzman are ideal choices for the Fox family, and Dumbledore himself—Michael Gambon—makes for a devilish foil as the most cunning of the three farmers, Mr. Bean. Even with lock-on voice talent, the film is never overly reliant on them, and uses affecting facial close-ups, expressions and silences, which account for a lot of the film's humor.

Though he had little experience as an animator, Fantastic Mr. Fox is recognizable as a "Wes Anderson movie" through and through. I'm not so sure the zany approach used here would have fared as well in live-action—it's a lot more Life Aquatic wackiness than Tenenbaums introspection; but, it bears recalling that Life Aquatic's focus on humor over emotion marked that film as a critical failure. Mileage may vary, but I found Anderson's oddball take on a children's film a blast to watch. As an animated film it feels both daring and fresh.

Cross-published on Ornery-Cosby and Twitch.

SFIAF 2009—Peter Galvin Previews the Lineup

By and large, animation gets a bum rap. The average filmgoer long ago decided that the medium catered either to kids or art house snobs, and Hollywood has spent the last few decades marketing accordingly. Luckily, it's a medium that also has some of the most fervent fans—ones who endlessly support the films and keep the animated flame burning—such as the San Francisco Film Society, which will host the San Francisco International Animation Festival (SFIAF) November 11-15, 2009 at the Landmark Embarcadero Center Cinema. SFIAF's fourth edition boasts four narrative features, a selection of shorts, and live events; a great way to become better acquainted with the overlooked genre if you're unfamiliar, and—if you're already on the hook—an opportune chance to see some of the best animated films of the year on a big screen.

The biggest draws will likely be SFIAF's features: First up, The Fantastic Mr Fox. Based on the eponymous novel by Roald Dahl, Wes Anderson's latest journeys away from live-action but retains all of the director's trademark eccentricities thanks to voice-acting from many of the actors who frequent his hit films. Shot entirely in stop-motion, Fox is the story of the titular Mr. Fox, a retired crook who risks his happy home life for one last hit on the three meanest farmers in town. Oceans 11 with George Clooney as a fox?! I can't confirm such a fantastic allegation, but I'll be attending this screening myself and my fingers are crossed. The film may open wide just a week or so later, but why not see it early and think up a swell question to ask Anderson (who is expected to attend)?

Next on the schedule is the irreverent Belgian import Panique au Village / A Town Called Panic. Twitch teammate Todd Brown writes: " 'Juvenile' and 'absurd' are perfectly good descriptors when talking about Panique, though only if they are accompanied by 'brilliant' and 'hysterical'." I've been anticipating Panique for quite some time since quickly discovering the English dub on Atom Films. Each episode follows the adventures of three toy figures—Cowboy, Indian and Horse—who share a house. Its simple setup has a big part in creating the sort of universal comedy that has crossed culture lines, the series having swiftly gained support in the UK from Aardman Animation (the studios behind Wallace and Gromit). Will the five-minute episodes translate well to feature length? Early word leans towards the positive.

A new Mamoru Oshii is always big news for animation fans, though you might be surprised to hear his latest is a samurai biopic. Stepping back from the usual action and sci-fi fare of previous efforts such as Storm Riders and Ghost in the Shell, Musashi: The Dream of the Last Samurai is more a detailed examination of the political climates that conspired to create the man who became the legendary samurai Musashi, rather than a straightforward story about his life. Using an anachronistic narrator to steer the film from sounding too much like an animated essay, Oshii's script explores both the myths and the facts but ultimately comes no closer to understanding the true identity of the mysterious samurai. Even when the film glorifies more than enlightens, Oshii's fascination with his subject shines, making Musashi an engrossing exercise in style and structure. At Twitch, Todd Brown stages his complaints while Simon Laperriere considers "ideal" the film's description as "an animated encyclopedia … since the film uses a structure similar to a book covering a wide variety of subjects all linked more or less with the same theme."

Closing the fest is Tarik Saleh's Metropia, a near-future mystery flick starring Vincent Gallo as a dissatisfied call-center employee who begins hearing voices after using a new brand of shampoo. As a slow-burn sci fi noir, Metropia is often cryptic and scattershot; but, anyone familiar with the genre knows better than to expect events to unfold in any other way. Saleh delivers enough intrigue and double-crosses, and such an interesting style of animation—big-eyed photorealistic characters that move almost like marionettes—that the plot's contrivances are negligible. At Twitch, Todd Brown writes: "Metropia fits beautifully into the canon of dystopic literature, a grim but thoroughly plausible vision of the future, a future in which progress leads to squalor rather than prosperity" whereas—though Simon Laperriere admires Metropia's "astounding" animation—he concludes the effort "disappoints."

If shorts are more your thing, Saturday brings a few compilations. The most eye-catching is The Best of Annecy (marking selections from The Annecy International Animated Film Festival), and Walt Disney's Alice Comedies, a selection gleaned from the 56 classic shorts made between 1923 and 1927 that helped launch the Disney Studios.

Of related interest: indieWIRE has published the 20 films submitted for consideration for Best Animated Feature at the Academy Awards®, including The Fantastic Mr. Fox and Panique au Village / A Town Called Panic.

Cross-published on Ornery-Crosby and Twitch.

BUGS BUNNY IN GLEN OR GLENDA

My thanks to Chuck Stephens for alerting me to this hilarious mash-up.

Bugs Bunny in "Glen or Glenda"

JAPANESE ANIMATION—Onstage Conversation With Hayao Miyazaki and Roland Kelts

As part of its 50-year anniversary, The Center for Japanese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley recently awarded internationally acclaimed filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki with the 2009 Berkeley Japan Prize, which honors individuals from all disciplines and professions who have, over a lifetime, influenced the world's understanding of Japan. Hayao Miyazaki is the second recipient of the recently inaugurated Berkeley Japan Prize; the 2008 winner was novelist Haruki Murakami. In conjunction with his in-person acceptance of the award, Hayao Miyazaki was also honored with a series of events held on the UC Berkeley campus celebrating his timeless body of film work.

One of those events was an onstage conversation in Berkeley's Zellerbach Auditorium between Hayao Miyazaki and Roland Kelts (Tokyo University lecturer and author of Japanamerica). My thanks to Peter van der Lugt for alerting me to the event and inviting me to transcribe the conversation for GhibliWorld.com. Further thanks to Duncan Williams, Chair of the Center for Japanese Studies, for arranging a last-minute pass to what had long been a sold-out event.

GhibliWorld.com has faithfully kept track of Miyazaki's West Coast promotional tour for Ponyo, which has included the trip to the UC Berkeley campus, UCLA, and San Diego's Comic-Con. Variety devoted their July 22 issue to contextualizing Miyazaki's career, via the American promotion of Ponyo, specifically at Comic-Con. In her report, Ellen Wolff quoted producer Kathleen Kennedy that one of her shared frustrations with Studio Ghibli is the "conundrum of how to distribute [Miyazaki's] movies in North America in a way that people realize these pictures can appeal to a wide range of audiences and not just be relegated to arthouses." I find this "conundrum"—that despite global acclaim Miyazaki's U.S. record is hit-and-miss—somewhat difficult to imagine. His capacity audiences seem to refute that. Further, as much as I wish Miyazaki the increased marketability he wishes for his films, I've poised concerns about how this is to be effected in the U.S.

The Variety coverage also included Erin Maxwell's dispatch from Comic-Con's Pixar/Disney panel, where Pixar's John Lasseter and Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki were honored with Inkpot Awards for "great contributions to pop culture."

Variety likewise gathered tribute testimonials from several industry professionals—Nick Park, Pete Doctor, Jean Giraud, among others—on how Miyazaki has inspired them. And Andrew Stewart reports on husband-and-wife team Don and Cindy Hewitt and the strategic care they have taken with dubbing Ponyo's English translations.

On behalf of Twitch, Doug Jones has compiled a condensed reaction to Miyazaki's various Southern California appearances and—as mentioned earlier—my transcript of Miyazaki's onstage conversation with Roland Kelts can be found here.

Illustration of Hayao Miyazaki courtesy of Marla Campbell, Variety. Cross-published on Twitch.

FRIZ FRELENG BLOGATHON—Speedy Gonzales (1955)

Dedicated to Brian Darr whose tireless calendrics keep Bay Area film aficionados alert and excited. Thank you for hosting this blogathon.

I grew up a child of migrant laborers who traveled between the Imperial Valley of California and the Magic Valley of southern Idaho, weeding and thinning fields of beets, beans and onions as tenaciously as they sought out the American dream. That dream remains as elusive now—if not more so—than then. I want to think we have come a long ways since all those rows we had to hoe decades ago, that there have been significant breakthroughs for immigrant ethnicities striving to create new lives for themselves and their children, and sometimes I believe that, though more often I have to believe that. As novelist William Goyen has written, sometimes you have to hold ideals aloft like banners in the wind, hold them before you to inspire one foot in front of the other. But I grow disheartened with marching for ideals in my elder years, especially when I hear on the radio the reports of vigilante groups in Santa Rosa antagonizing day laborers; "Minute Men" who consider themselves patriotic for harassing those less fortunate than themselves. I'm forced to conclude that some issues are not meant to be resolved within any one lifetime, let alone successive generations, and we each bear the burden of our own biography in the ongoing sojourn of these social histories.

In that baggage I tote on my back is a memory of a Summer afternoon with my mother in Twin Falls, Idaho, our walking into a store only to be sternly halted by a proprieter pointing to a sign: "No Mexicans or dogs allowed." I can still recall my mother's anger and her tearful shame that her young boy should have to grow up in such a world. Naturally, I took refuge in fantasy, in books and comics and my beloved movies, and—like all kids—in cartoons. I guess it's no surprise at all that children identify with mice and that the adult world looms over them like large menacing cats. How mice survive in a cat's world is a child's legacy. There was Mickey, of course, and Mighty Mouse on his way to save the day, and Tom constantly chasing his bemused Jerry, and Jinx hating meeses to pieces, and then there was the "fastest mouse in all Mexico"—Speedy Gonzales! As a little Chicano boy I loved Speedy Gonzales. Not so much because he was an accurate portrayal of my ethnicity—nothing of the sort—but because he was all I had in a world where my ethnicity was not allowed let alone visible and because he was quick and clever and made a fool of El Greengo Poosygato (aka Sylvester) time and time again, cartoon after cartoon, all the time joyfully and unabashedly shouting, "¡Arriba! ¡Arriba! ¡Ándale! ¡Ándale! YEEHAH!" (courtesy of Mel Blanc).

Thus, I was among those who a few years back protested The Cartoon Network's refusal to air Speedy Gonzales's cartoons, alleging he was politically incorrect and an offensive ethnic stereotype of Mexicans and Mexican life. As reported by Michael Park for Fox News in late March 2002, Speedy Gonzales—the fastest mouse in Mexico who had easily bested Sylvester the Cat, Daffy Duck and other assorted banditos in his nearly 50-year career—couldn't seem to escape the clutches of the Cartoon Network. Matthew Hunter, who has written one of the finest on-line tribute histories of Speedy's career, spearheaded an online petition protesting The Cartoon Network's decision.

Hunter's backstory on this particular issue is of interest: "In the 1980's, Speedy was just as enduring as Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck when it came to television and video. He proved himself as popular as the rest, and was shown just as often. Nickelodeon cable network, the station best known for their original Nicktoons series, has always been the best place to see Speedy Gonzales cartoons from all eras of WB animation, since they once had the rights to virtually all of them.

"But in September of 1999, Nickelodeon dropped their showings of all Warner Brothers cartoons and sent them to Cartoon Network, and a year later ABC network did the same, making Cartoon Network the only television channel to show Warner Brothers classic cartoons on TV. Cartoon Network has been a fairly good place to see the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. However, Cartoon Network's owner at the time, Ted Turner, supposedly asked the programmers to stop airing Speedy cartoons due to their content. This was evidently done at about the time Turner and Warner Brothers merged companies, and for the reason that with so many international venues, the content that in any way ridiculed foreigners might be offensive to some viewers."

In April 2002, Jim Burns reported to CSN News on the involvement of the nation's oldest Hispanic-American civil rights organization—The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)—and Hispanic Online in refuting The Cartoon Network's categorizations. [Unfortunately, that link is now broken.] By June 2002, Michael Park followed up his original story for Fox News proclaiming that media exposure, Hunter's on-line petition and the outcry from fans had been effective; The Cartoon Network reconsidered their position.

As one contributor ["Map Kernow"] to an online forum debating the issue angrily vented: "This shows what I've always maintained: 'political correctness' and 'sensitivity' etc. aren't about being 'sensitive' to minorities or people of color. It's a crutch for guilty liberal white people to feel good about themselves. It doesn't mean a damn thing that Mexicans themselves do like Speedy Gonzales—some white folks at Cartoon Network have decided they shouldn't oughta like Speedy, and that's that. The important thing, you see, is for those nice white liberals at Cartoon Network to feel good about themselves, with a nice big pat on the back for being so 'enlightened' and 'sensitive.' " I salute the righteousness of Kernow's rant. Rather that, than having the fastest—let alone the only—Mexican mouse I know censored from t.v. history by too-well-meaning thought police.

Anyways, in point, as Matthew Hunter synopsized, "Speedy showed cats, crows, banditos and greedy ducks what cartoons were all about—laughter." Which reminds me of something Susan Sontag wrote in her brilliant essay "Where the Stress Falls": "Comedy depends on certitude, the certitude about what is foolish and what is not, and on characters who are 'characters', that is, types." Take away the types and you take away the rich variance of laughter.

So what does all this have to do with the Friz Freleng blogathon? Well … I'm glad you ask. Surely you know that Freleng directed the very best Speedy Gonzales cartoons (of which there are 42 in number)? He didn't create Speedy—that honor is reserved for Robert McKimson who debuted the character in 1953's Cat-Tails for Two—but, along with Hawley Pratt, Freleng redesigned Speedy Gonzales (changing the spelling of his name from González for starters) for the eponymous Oscar-winning best short subject of 1955, Speedy Gonzales.

1955 was the year—you might remember and, if not, you might Google ("to remember" and "to Google" have become nearly synonymous)—when Marty swept the Oscars, winning Best Picture, Best Actor (Ernest Borgnine), Best Director (Delbert Mann), and Best Screenplay (Paddy Chayefsky). The monotony was alleviated by Anna Magnani winning Best Actress for Tennessee Williams' The Rose Tattoo, Jack Lemmon winning Best Supporting Actor for Mister Roberts, and Jo Van Fleet winning Best Supporting Actress for East of Eden. The music was good too: Oklahoma! shared the prize for best score with Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing, which won Best Song (buy me a martini and find me a piano to sit on and I'll croon it out of tune for you, splayed fingers and all). To Catch A Thief, Picnic, The Bridges of Toko-Ri and I'll Cry Tomorrow were also all at hand to grasp the golden nude, as was the Fastest Mouse in all of Mexico. No wonder I loved him.

I found it sweet and telling that—participating in Nancy de Los Santos and Alberto Domínguez's 2002 documentary The Bronze Screen: 100 Years of the Latino Image in American Cinema—Cheech Marin offered as his "contribution" to those 100 years the image of Speedy Gonzales cheerfully persevering against all manner of obstacles placed in his path. They're going to put tacks in your path, Cheech described, they're going to put bears, they're going to come up with all sorts of things that you're going to have to get around or die and—like Speedy Gonzales—you'll say, "Okay!"

Though IMDb user Robert Reynolds is astonished that Speedy Gonzales won out over Legend of Rockabye Point and Good Will To Men (also competing that year), the formula of Speedy outwitting Sylvester proved popular and lasted for a decade. As a trivial aside, "Sylvester" is the Americanized version of the Mexican word silvestre, which means "wild". I always considered it hilarious that this lisping housecat would be named such. Anyways, back to the award-winning Speedy Gonzales, you recall the story: Starving Mexican mice want access to a cheese factory guarded by Sylvester Cat and send for Speedy Gonzales to breeze past Sylvester and obtain the cheese for them.

Somehow, with all the immigration concerns all across the country but particularly in California, I can't stop thinking of that ad campaign: "California—it's the cheese." Which further reminds me of Guillermo Arriaga's heartfelt plea when he spoke at the Balboa Theater: "I think the United States has all the right to build whatever walls they need to protect its borders. They can send the whole U.S. Army to protect the border and I think it's all right. But it's a shame that my country doesn't have the capacity of building jobs for its citizens. That's [more] shameful than all the walls built by the Bush administration. But we have to realize something. The United States needs the labor force to keep running the economy. This is a reality. Mexico doesn't have the capacity to create jobs and the United States needs [laborers]. So instead of putting walls and putting these warm, great people in danger of death, why don't we make a profound dialogue between our countries and find the best way to resolve this?"

As Speedy reminds us, and Sylvester seems to forget, there is plenty of cheese to go around, and plenty of laughter too.

02/24/10 UPDATE: Eugene Hernandez reports at indieWIRE that Speedy Gonzales is in for a feature film treatment, with George Lopez providing the vocals, as detailed in a recent New York Times announcement by Dave Itzkoff.